There’s an economic theory called the Lipstick Indicator — in brief terms, this is a trend observed in times of economic downturn, coined when retailers noticed women spending money on small luxury items (ie. lipstick) instead of high-end items (cars, new homes, etc). It seemed that people were compensating for lack of “big ticket” items by choosing smaller specialty goods.

Today, we can see this trend reflected in eBay sales. Terapeak has been comparing the trend-lines of middle-to-high-end luxury items, and one of our first instincts was to examine the sales of ladies’ handbags — a market we’ve been following for quite some time. Here’s a category trend taken from the past 365 days:

As you can see, there’s a decline over the past year — about 25% — though it’s by no means a “dead” market.

So then what about smaller items? What sacrifices are these buyers making, if not investing in luxury items? Instead of lipstick, we’ve selected another luxe good — anti-aging products. Check out this trend-line for the “Anti-Aging Products” category:

Pretty striking, don’t you think? It’s just one more example of how a fluid online market is near-impossible to contain, and how being forward-thinking and mindful of the Lipstick Indicator will help any seller find their niche.

With the steady popularity of designer fashion accessories on eBay — women’s handbags in particular — our team at Terapeak decided it would be interesting to compare the sales of a few top-selling brands. Terapeak’s new handbags index tracks the sales of Coach, Dooney & Bourke, Fendi, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and Prada products in terms of total sales, items sold, and average price.

The result, seen above, is perhaps our most functional and seller-friendly index-widget yet. Based on the past 30 days of closed listings, we can see that Louis Vuitton products go for significantly higher prices than their competitors, while Coach far outsells other manufacturers in terms of quantity. There’s also an option to select one of the bag-makers individually, and to view its stats and trends more closely.

As always, the index comes with a companion widget (shown above) that you can embed easily into any blog or webpage, as well as the ability to conduct your own Terapeak search; that means you can do a search for your own favorite purse, or anything else on eBay.

You can view the full index here, and a link to the widget (”Share”) near the bottom left of the screen.